Great Parents: The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Kevin Kirk was born in Denver, Colorado, on January 20, 1950. His mother was a classical pianist and principal flutist; his father was a jazz enthusiast. Kevin's mother taught him the piano. His father introduced him to friends who were jazz musicians.  Kevin began playing the piano at the age of 4. During high school and college he focused on academics and sports, playing music only privately within the dark recesses of music department practice rooms and never in any kind of public setting. After attending college in Washington, D.C., he relocated to the Pacific Northwest serving as the resident director of a crisis shelter facility for youth at risk located in Boise, Idaho. Kevin began playing the piano and guitar in his private quarters (his bedroom within the group home) as a way of recovering from the sadness and difficulty inherent in his work. Kevin's brother Dennis Kirk became concerned that Kevin was becoming a little too solemn and tried to come to his rescue by connecting Kevin with some musicians looking to form an original band. Dennis Kirk is absolutely responsible for Kevin becoming a professional musician.





Sage...
The band Sage (this name played off the synonym for wisdom and sage of sagebrush, indigenous to Idaho's steppe region) was the result of an alliance between some remarkable, imaginative, young musicians forming their first band. The goal was to produce only original music. Kevin wrote all the compositions and lyrics for the group. The music could be described as "Brazil 66 meets Pink Floyd." The band recorded a studio demo session in 1972. Sage consisted of piano, lead and rhythm guitars, clarinet, flute and saxophone, drums, bass, and two female vocalists. One of those vocalists was gifted19-year-old Sally Tibbs, who had recently moved to Idaho from Los Angeles. She was also recruited and introduced to Kevin by Dennis Kirk. 



  


Kevin Kirk & Sally Tibbs...
Eventually, Kevin and Sally would form a duo and begin a career as performing artists, a career that has continued off and on for over thirty years. Their musical genres had changed from original rock to classic jazz and blues and would result in 2 CD releases: By Request and In Motion.  Kevin, thanks to the influence of his father, always had a respect for the quality of the body of music that came out of the 30's, 40's, and 50's jazz genre. He worked to be able to communicate fluently in Duke Ellington, George Gershwin and Cole Porter. He also loved The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Joni Mitchell. His repertoire, even during the earliest club work, often consisted of the obscure but culturally significant. In the earliest 70's, while performing in the luxury hotel lounges, he was performing songs from Willie Dixon, The Band, Cleo Laine, Chi Coltrane, Taj Mahal, Laura Nyro, Mose Allison, Billie Holiday, John Martyn, Michael Franks, Shirley Horn, John Prine, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Janis Ian, Henry Mancini, Steely Dan, Mini Ripperton, Thelonius Monk, Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks, Bill Evans, Neil Young, Ray Charles, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and even an occasional taste of Led Zeppelin or Frank Zappa. 





Chops!
In 1975, Kevin formed the jazz trio Chops! [Musicians, in order to describe a musician's playing prowess, use the term "Chops"] with two legendary and formidable jazz players. Drummer Jim Kincaid and trumpeter Kirt Kitchens teamed up with Kevin and launched a groundbreaking career that took them on the road playing jazz venues from Portland, Oregon, to Simsbury, Connecticut. Chops' heavy schedule of performing and touring allowed them only one occasion to document their work. They recorded a remarkable studio session in Portland, Oregon, while on the road. They did four songs in succession and kept the first take on all the tunes. They only used one hour of studio time. The recording engineer had never experienced anything like this in his life. Chops! however, wasn't surprised in the least. They knew that this happened simply because the band played 4-5 hours, six nights a week and insisted on being tight every single performance.  Chops! was truly unforgettable in concert and soon became an active part in an insurgence of interest in jazz on the part of baby boomers. Chops! had some special techniques that made a unique impression with audiences. Jim Kincaid could play the melody line on his snare, in pitch, along with the lead instrument. He would apply varying pressure while moving from the edge to the center with one elbow on the drumhead. This technique allowed him to achieve the notes of the scale. Jim also played flute and drums simultaneously. Kirt Kitchens often played in octave ranges above and below the range of his trumpet and flugelhorn. Kirt played a showstopper lead on almost every song he played. It was as if he could make the horn walk across the stage on its own power and jump into his arms. Kevin covered the bass lines on his Fender Rhodes keyboard so convincingly that the audience swore that there had to have been a bass player. He also played harmonica while keeping the bass and piano going.  It was rare that this trio did not receive standing ovations and multiple encores. When Chops! would come home off the road and perform at The Bouquet in Boise, the owner would have to stand on a table when it was 2:00 a.m. and scream at the top of his lungs to the packed house "Get out! Get out of my club! I mean it, you've got to get out now!" The patrons simply would not let the band stop playing music. The musical collaboration between these three artists is still talked about 25 years later.  One "endless" night involved a jam session in which Kevin, Jim, and Kirt hosted members of the Stan Kenton Big Band. On this particular night the owner of the Bouquet did not tell the packed house to get out when 2:00 a.m. came along. He said the jam could only keep going if every, single person passed in every, single alcoholic beverage, complying with the state liquor laws for closing time. This is a nearly impossible task for a crowd of charged-up happy people; but they actually did it. The music continued until 4:00 a.m. Had the Bouquet served breakfast, they probably would have played until what Chops! referred to as "the crack of noon".  Just when Chops! got their big break into the New York jazz scene, Kevin had a health crisis in his immediate family and was forced to leave the group to seek specialized medical treatment in Washington, D.C.  Initially, Kevin paid his dues starting out at Food For Thought, a club where musicians passed the basket, but eventually played at many fine venues in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, traveling occasionally to other East Coast cities. He found himself playing earlier in the week in jazz rooms that booked many of his idols such as Mose Allison, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Shirley Horn and George Shearing. At one venue, Kevin rotated weeks with the legendary guitarist Michael Hedges at Rene's Papillion. He performed at the Georgetown Four Seasons Hotel, the grand flagship Marriott Hotel, the Old Colony Inn in Old Town Alexandria, Da Dominicos, Alexander III's, King of France Tavern (a major jazz venue), and a favorite venue, Jaspers. Kevin auditioned his way into and landed a gig that required him to compete with 30 of the D.C. area's best musicians, most of whom were recording artists.  Going from the privacy of music department practice rooms or playing in his bedroom to hearing his name announced regularly on radio stations in the nation's capitol was a thrill and true confidence builder to Kevin. One evening, he received the thumbs up signal from a genuine legend: Felix Grant of WMAL FM (the Walter Cronkite of jazz radio program hosts) who happened to be in Kevin's audience.






Go West Young Man...
As nice as it was for Kevin to know that he could make the cut in the big city, he missed Idaho's majestic mountains and pristine wilderness areas. He wanted his children to experience this beautiful environment while growing up. He headed back west. Some other musicians that had world-class credentials made the same decision around the same time.







Onomatopoeia...
Kevin Kirk met Tom Tompkins who was playing principal viola in the Boise Philharmonic. Tom had played, toured and recorded with Providence and later with Justin Hayward and John Lodge of the Moody Blues, in their band called the Blue Jays. He received a gold record for his efforts with this band. Tom played all over the world with the Blue Jays and with various orchestras. Mike Seifrit was another globe trotter having played bass with Tina Turner, the Legends of Rock 'n Roll [Chuck Berry, et al], Rick Springfield, Three Dog Night, Paul Williams, and more. After getting his pilots license, Mike decided to work as a L.A. studio musician by commuting from beautiful Idaho. Drummer Patrick Kurdy worked in L.A. and Las Vegas then toured Europe after attending Berklee School of Music in Boston and Boston's New England Conservatory of Music. Patrick returned to Idaho to purchase a music store, Musicians' Pro Shop, and establish his own music school of percussion: The Modern Academy of Music. After obtaining her Masters from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and being recognized as one of the top seven flutists in the nation, Sara Williams moved to Idaho and became principal flute for the Philharmonic. It must have been an act of Providence that brought these extraordinary artists together in the same remote area. They formed the band Onomatopoeia. This turned out to be the band of a lifetime for Kevin. He composed the songs for the group and wrote the parts specifically for the individual members. The musicians of Onomatopoeia then contributed their unique interpretation and personal arranging ideas to the music. They recorded Catch 'n' Release and performed concerts and jazz festivals. For Kevin, this could only be described as a labor of love, a dream band, and a celebration of music's profound meaningfulness. These musicians had the resumes and the incomparable expertise to bring Kevin's music to life, full throttle. During an Onomatopoeia concert, after the second song, audience members would begin walking to the CD sales tables and they would continue this until the concert venue was closed. At one point, the band had difficulty keeping a stock of available CDs. Catch 'n' Release was critically acclaimed and word of it spread quickly. Demand required a second manufacturing run after only one month in the stores.



  



Golden Retriever Studios...
Prior to the formation of Onomatopoeia, Kevin began to diligently polish his compositional skills. He began to build a recording studio with the help of Richard Olson, a recording engineer who had relocated to Idaho from California to live near the blue ribbon fly-fishing streams. Richard pulled out all the stops to equip Kevin with the necessary tools and knowledge to record state of the art music, exportable to anywhere in the world. Named after Cody, the Kirk's loving, too-smart, if-he-had-opposing-thumbs-could-be-an-astronaut-John-Glen-type golden retriever, Golden Retriever Studios has grown to be an advanced, world class, recording facility capable of retrieving those golden moments of music that can magically take place in a recording session. GR studios has two mantras: "Don't Let Your Mix Go to the Labs!" (Cody's favorite) and "Sleep Is For Sissies!" (This is Kevin's philosophy of life and the coffee industry's mother lode client mindset). Kevin began to produce soundtracks for television. He was commissioned to compose and produce 13 hours of Music for the Epic series Proceeding On Through A Beautiful Country. With Director/Producer Jeff Tucker and writer Royce Williams, Kevin did the equivalent of producing a record album once a week in order to stay on schedule and meet the broadcast deadlines. In excess of three hundred compositions involving a myriad of instrumentation were required to complete this project. Kevin also composed a network theme for PBS for the Presidential Election coverage and a major television series aired on PBS called The Horse. He wrote the theme songs and soundtracks to Incredible Idaho, Outdoor Idaho, a film about State Police Troopers called At Any Moment, and many other projects. Kevin is still devoting time to producing music for film and television. Kevin was awarded the Nell Shipman Award for Original Composition for his soundtrack work on At Any Moment. Along with his personal projects, Kevin has recorded and produced 4 CD releases in the past 12 months. These projects have ranged from completing a 15-year effort conceived and composed by Richard Olson, which married music and lyrics to a series of famous novels, to a release of Celtic music for Eileen Alana Steiner who commuted to Kevin's studio from Hollywood. 





Kevin Kirk's "Magic Song Food"...
Magic Song Food is a special gift to all the wonderful fans that have waited patiently for Kevin's next release. Kevin wrote 11 marvelous songs and also featured a song written by co-producer Tom Tompkins. Tom's violin and viola have never sounded better. He also provided guitar, flute, and cello. Brent Jensen took a break from his busy schedule in order to record some very exciting, beautiful saxophone parts. Brent and Kevin have played jazz together for many years now. They formed a trio called Urban Renewal in the mid-eighties. Brent's recent CD, a Paul Desmond tribute entitled The Sound of a Dry Martini, has been topping the national jazz charts. Brent was voted one of the hottest ten jazz saxophonists by Jazziz Magazine. Kevin's respect for Brent predates his national recognition. They inspire each other and generate a lot of fun and exhilaration when they collaborate. Jon Hyneman provided drums as well as percussion and contributed a thrilling array of rhythmic delights. Jon's intelligent drumming provided a foundation for some very challenging music while simultaneously thinking outside of the box. Jon heads up his own band and his authoritative playing adds a new dynamic to Kevin's sound. Jon's enthusiasm for this project (which included being able to sing everyone else's parts for them) is evident in the spirit of Magic Song Food. The word is out that Magic Song Food was well worth the wait and is everything Catch 'n' Release fans hoped it would be and more. Kevin feels this is his strongest release to date. Linda Laz, of the Laz Spectrum radio program on KBSU 90.1 FM, has been providing regular airplay of Magic Song Food. Linda has been a great supporter of Kevin's music for many years. She was gracious to attend the concert supporting the release of Magic Song Food. On May 29th, a CD Release Celebration concert took place at the Esther Simplot Performing Arts Academy. Violinist Jill Rowley Tompkins and cellist Ned Johnson, principal musicians from the Philharmonic, joined percussionist J.D. Ballard and blues harmonica player Bill Blahd along with six members of Onomatopoeia: Tom Tompkins, Jon Hyneman, Patrick Kurdy, Mike Seifrit, Brent Jensen and Kevin. Performing Magic Song Food live was awe-inspiring both for musicians and the audience. Many people in attendance have written to say that they picture the band in concert when they listen to the CD. A major surprise involved the premier of "Martha's Smile" which had been a carefully guarded secret. Martha was sitting in the second row with her husband Rick and close friends. It was one of those special nights of music, Kevin's favorite to date.